Dante's Inferno

Dante envisions Purgatory as a mountain. The seven levels of Purgatory in Dante's Divine Comedy are called terraces. At the top of the mountain is paradise. To get there, a person must be purified...

In very basic terms, a comedy in Dante's time was the name given to a work that started badly but ended well. If we examine The Divine Comedy, we will see that it falls perfectly into this...

Dante wrote Inferno while in political exile from Florence, and he used it as a vehicle to express his political beliefs and take comfort in imagining bad ends for his enemies. However, the poem's...

I think there may be a couple of reasons for this. One is that this is Dante's allegory of life, and as he is writing the story of a man who has strayed from the straight and narrow path to God,...

One of the most impressive elements about Dante's Inferno is his configuration of the inner- most regions of Hell. Dante clearly recognizes that there are two types of anger. The first type is...

In canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante encounters those people not fully dead, yet are no longer alive, who wait in the antechamber between Heaven and Hell. Here they're subjected to the meaningless...

In canto III of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil reach the gate of hell. Dante is absolutely terrified. This is for good reason, too. He can hardly see a thing, but he can hear a lot; he hears a...

If there's one moral lesson from Dante's Inferno that bears repeating, it's that evil is always eventually punished and that everyone will one day suffer the consequences of their actions. In...

Beatrice effectively picks up from where Virgil left off. As a pagan, Virgil is unable to enter Paradise, but as a Christian, Beatrice can. Virgil can only lead Dante up to the gates of Paradise,...

It is difficult to imagine a work of literature of more importance to a national culture than Dante's The Divine Comedy. Not only did he write it in the Tuscan or Florentine Italian, this long poem...

Dante puts the sodomites at the bottom of the seventh circle of hell. That's bad. Within the seventh circle, there are three rings. In ring number 1, Dante puts people who killed for their own...

Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy as an Italian epic poem. There are three parts of it, concerning Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell, but most people only read the Inferno. One purpose of the...

Charon has absolutely no intention of letting Dante and Virgil on his boat to cross the river of Acheron. See, the thing is, they aren't dead, and Charon's boat is strictly for dead people. You...

Dante Alighieri's three-part epic poem, the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia)—composed of Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise or Heaven)—is intended to convey the message,...

While short, Canto III of Dante's Inferno is the first glimpse we get into Hell. As such, there will naturally be a couple of key elements to note. Upon entering what, for lack of a better term,...

In canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, come to the banks of the river that separates the realms of the living from Hell, which only spirits may enter. An old man...

When Dante attempts to cross the river into the Underworld, Charon, the boat driver, tries to prevent him from going. He is angered that a living soul would attempt to enter the Underworld and see...

In canto 3, Dante and Virgil read the inscription written on the gates of hell: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." These words unnerve Dante, who says to Virgil that the words are "hard" for...

Inferno consists largely of a description of Hell and the various ironic punishments that await sinners of every variety. There are many different horrendous torments that await sinners, all...

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is an Italian poet who modeled The Divine Comedy after Virgil’s Aeneid in the form of an epic poem. It is separated into three distinct parts: the Inferno, or Hell,...

Dante's Inferno is indeed a religious allegory. Dante is involved in a spiritual journey which will take him down to the fiery depths of hell, through Purgatory, and then finally up into the...

The river and ferryman of Dante's Inferno are based on Greek myth rather than on Christian concepts of the afterlife, a reflection of Dante's work during the Italian Renaissance, when themes from...

Charon is the ferryman who transports the dead to Hades. He is characterized by Dante as a prickly white-haired old man with fiery eyes. He refuses initially to take Dante across to the land of the...

The first circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno is described in canto 4. It is called Limbo. The people in this circle are not suffering in the manner of other denizens of Hell, because they are not...

The major difference between the poet Dante and the character or pilgrim Dante is that the author is less sympathetic to the sinners in the circles of Hell than is the character. The poet Dante...

In the first canto of the Inferno, Dante is driven off his path by a she-wolf. It is then that he meets the Roman poet Virgil, who is to guide him through the underworld. Virgil warns Dante to...

Dante is the middle of life when he embarks on his journey to the underworld and then to purgatory and paradise. At 35—midway between birth and his expected death at 70—he has lost his way. He no...

The number 3 is everywhere in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. For one thing, the poem itself is structured according to the rhyme scheme terza rima, which uses stanzas of three lines that employ...

During Dante's time (the turn of the fourteenth century), the Catholic Church was known for greed and corruption. Dante's depicted hell is a place where the punishments for sinners fit their...

In the Inferno by Dante Alighieri, there are nine circles of Hell, each reflecting more serious sins and each having punishments reflecting the nature and severity of a specific type of mortal sin....

Dante doesn't have much time for popes. At least for those who transgress what he regards as the appropriate bounds of their authority. There are numerous pontiffs in Dante's vision of Hell, cast...

Remember, Lucifer has three faces and three mouths. You might argue that the three faces represent something like a satanic supervision of the Holy Trinity. You might also remember that being a...

There is not an easy way to answer this question, as much would remain entirely speculative and perhaps reductive. Overall, Dante might claim that he is tempted by all of these sins and the poem...

Minos was an important figure in Greek mythology. Sometimes he was described as a human king and sometimes as the son of Zeus and Europa. He is famous for being heartless, as he would feed young...

I would argue that the relationship between Dante and Virgil doesn't change that much over the course of The Inferno. When Virgil first appears in canto 1, he offers to help Dante, who has been...

The Divine Comedy was written by Italian writer Dante Alighieri in 1320. It is divided into three parts, which are entitled Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Inferno is the depiction of hell....

The soothsayers are people who could foresee the future and who provided information to others based on what they saw. The classical soothsayer Tiresias from the Oedipus cycle is one example, and...

One of the main claims that Dante makes is that the actions one takes in one's physical life will follow one into the afterlife. For example, in the second circle of Hell, the lustful...

Here are the levels: Level 1) Limbo: a peaceful and sad place, a place of unbaptised, non Christian souls. Level 2) The level of the lustful. Strong winds violently blow their souls to and fro for...

In Canto 3, as Dante and Virgil stand on the "melancholy shore" of the River Acheron, the last barrier to their entrance into the underworld proper, Dante describes the approach of Charon: And...

After Virgil and Dante enter through the gate of Hell, Dante is greatly perturbed by a hideous cacophony of screams, moans, and shrill, faint voices. He asks Virgil where these terrifying voices...

Dante explores the numerous circles of Hell in this story, in each of which a different sin is relegated. Throughout the story we have seen the punishments for a number of terrible sins, and in...

Of these numbers, three is the most significant in Dante's Divine Comedy, particularly in Inferno. The Divine Comedy as a whole is divided into three sections: Inferno, Purgatio, and Paradiso, the...

One of Dante's messages is his belief that various types of sin will have different consequ3encesz in the afterlife. Of course, the religious control of almost all aspects of life during Dante's...

I think that your assertion that the dove is a sympathetic symbol is an assumption. Dante draws from plenty of classical sources; in classical myth the dove is associated with Venus (eros as...

The "dark wood" that establishes the exposition to the Inferno can literally be seen as an area in which the pilgrim does not know where he is. It is explained that the pilgrim, later to be...

In Dante's Inferno (by Dante Alighieri), Dante is on his life's journey and realizes he has become lost. The Roman poet Virgil comes to the rescue (at the request of Beatrice) to help Dante...

I believe the quote, made by Dante to Virgil, concerns the people in this portion of hell, who are running around, trying to escape the stings of the hornets and wasps, but who can never do...

In The Divine Comedy, Virgil acts as Dante's guide and mentor. His unfailing wisdom and patience help Dante get through the many trials and tribulations he endures on his epic journey, stiffening...

Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius are a perverse inversion of the Holy Trinity. These three are a trinity of evil. They dangle from Satan's mouths, perpetually in pain from being ground by his...